Most students, when they graduate, have some debt to repay. And if this debt isn’t paid soon, it keeps mounting, which eventually becomes a life-time habit. Besides, the approach you have always maintained in college becomes your companion even at workplace. Hence, instead of being simply careless, being a bit responsible can change your life path.

What advice would I give to graduating students?

Be enthusiastic, always. During college, we are quite enthusiastic, but similar passion for work, money, and relationships isn’t noticed among most individuals after graduating.

Money

You know you would require money for everything. You received pocket money from your parents during college, but not anymore. You know you have to take care of your finances in order to have a smooth life. So be enthusiastic about it, and start building a fortune. As soon as you start working, save some money every month, and invest in various financial products early in life. If you ignore it, you will have to face financial hardships all your life. The decision you make during this phase will influence the rest of your life considerably.

Skills

You don’t learn much, except for theory, in college. The skills required at your workplace are learned only when you start working. You can, like most graduates do, ignore it during initial few years. Very soon, however, you would realize the importance of learning these skills and adopting them in your professional role. Hence, it’s wise to start learning as soon as you can. The most skillful grows quickly. Ignoring them would only make your life more difficult.

Relationships

You always need others in various aspects of your life. Whenever you get an opportunity to build a relationship with anyone, jump on it. Life is too short to waste time on having futile things like grudges, jealousy, and ego. Smile every day, and enjoy the beauty of life.

You can obviously take the easy path by simply avoiding all these things, and being indifferent about it. You will, however, find yourself being tied down, and watch opportunities pass by. Life would be fun, and worth living if you have more money, more skills, and fruitful relationships.

Remember, roles played by an individual in and after college are different, so you need to alter your approach accordingly.

If you think only the course fees are high, you are in for a not so pleasant surprise! Even the application forms cost more than before. Earlier it was around $10 to $100m, but now an application form costs much more. An application form for admission in Columbia University is not $70b but $75. Most colleges have hiked the cost of the application form by 5%.

Not only application forms, even the exam fees of certain common entrance exams are quite high. The fee of $ 45 for the SAT exam is pretty high, isn’t it? If only one entrance exam costs this much, then consider the amount of money in total that parents have to cough up when their children write many competitive exams. Children can’t really help that, can they? Times have become so competitive, that they’ve got to write a lot of entrance examinations to place themselves in good colleges and good careers. Well, individually all these fees might not look big, but when you add them up, they really do make a big difference.

A common application form which is accepted by more than 150 colleges comes to the rescue of students. You just need to submit only one online application and it is accepted by all the colleges. Apart from saving costs, you save upon a lot of time too which you’d have wasted by filling in dozens of application forms for entrance examinations and admissions. Application forms of conservatories, i.e. music schools cost the highest today. Julliard School and Mannes College all sell their application forms at $100 each. Why does an admission form of Conservatories cost more than that of normal liberal schools? This, they say, is because the admission procedure involves a rigorous review in which an audition test is conducted for the applicant.

Next, the Ivy League Colleges top the list of institutions that charge high application fees. Columbia University, Yale University and Princeton University all charge fee from $65 to $75. Once again review and elaborate processing costs seem to be the reasons behind the high fee. But most Ivy League colleges are ready to offer the application forms at a lower cost for those with low income and large family size.

The other educational institutions that charge high fees are Women’s Colleges, State Schools and Military schools in that order.

You have to be careful all the more while making investments in graduate courses now more than ever because the recession has changed the entire scenario of employment and has affected individual fields of employment in different ways. You may join a career of your choice according to its popular demand but later on find that you are not landing up with a good job after completing the course. It is not your fault or the fault of the college but the fault of times. With this current high fiscal uncertainty is it possible to say which profession will be in high demand apart from the ones like medicine and law which are always in demand ?

Before deciding upon a career it is always better to seek the advice of a career counselor at present. According to career counselors, if you’ve been sacked off your job due to hiring problems of your company due to bad economy , or you just want to switch careers, you could always go for a graduate course because that serves as a resume enhancement for you. Many working American students are opting for graduate studies. Not only the costs of the course, but also the amount of money they would lose had they preferred to stay working instead of attending graduate school, also matters. But I’d suggest that engaging in higher studies is always beneficial in the long run because you’ll be eligible for a job with a higher salary. Though it might appear as though you are losing money now, your future will be very good.

Before you opt for a course you should do some research on the courses that are in good demand. Information resources such as The Bureau of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook have information about all the careers that will be in demand in future and your expected revenue. Career counselors are always the best sources for you to tap when it comes to finding out the best career that you could opt for. Otherwise you yourself can visit the websites of different companies and find out what they are offering and the degree that is most rewarding for you.

Fields like education, health care, environment, law, social work and business are some of the fields that are showing an upward trend in their demand.